Michael Piro

Michael (Mike) Piro is the Chief Investment Officer and a General Partner at Montgomery Partners, a fully integrated real estate investment firm founded in 1984 and headquartered in Mill Valley, California. He has been with the firm since 2004. In his role he oversees brokerage-related acquisition and disposition activities, contract negotiations, project planning and implementation, risk management, and property/asset-management oversight. Over his tenure he has participated in more than $1 billion of real estate transactions, representing the acquisition of over 7,500 apartment units across Northern and Southern California, Nevada, and Colorado. He is a licensed California real estate broker and serves as broker of record for the firm's affiliated management company, MCM.

Before entering real estate, Piro worked as an Executive Recruiter at Schweichler, Price & Partners, described as one of the top ten technology executive-search firms in the United States. As a top producer there, he worked closely with venture-backed technology startups and their top-tier venture-capital backers — a background that likely explains why aggregated/CRM data sometimes mislabels him with startup-investing terminology.

Piro earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Oregon, where he was a recipient of the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business "Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award."

Montgomery Partners itself is a second-generation, family-founded firm led by founder and Managing Principal John Palmer, with Spencer Palmer (VP of Investments) representing the next generation. The firm specializes in identifying, acquiring, renovating, and managing value-add multifamily assets and in facilitating 1031 exchanges for its investors, and it marked its 40th anniversary in 2024 with a rebrand and new website.

• Asset class: Value-add multifamily (apartment communities), typically B- to C-class properties that are undervalued and can be repositioned through capital improvements.
• Strategy: Buy in "high barrier to entry" markets, renovate/reposition, and hold for long-term wealth creation; the firm actively budgets renovation capital per deal (e.g., ~$2.16M into a $10M Sacramento acquisition; ~$316K into a $2.2M Santa Rosa acquisition).
• Deal size: Individual property acquisitions commonly in the low-single-digit to low-double-digit millions; portfolio-scale track record exceeding $1B and 7,500+ units.
• Geography: Core Western U.S. markets — California, Nevada, Colorado — with stated expansion into Utah, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.
• Investor structure: Serves 1031-exchange and long-term investors seeking durable, income-producing multifamily returns; the firm frames its pitch around California's persistent housing-supply constraints and "high barriers to owning a home."
• What makes them say yes: Undervalued apartment assets with clear renovation/repositioning upside in supply-constrained submarkets.